A metaphysical & scientific study of the evolutionary prospects of the human body in the light of Sri Aurobindo's vision & assurance of the body's divine destiny.
This book with an unusual title is offered to the readers with a sense of genuine humility. The author has no pretensions to act the role of an oracle for the future, nor does he seek to put forward his views and reflections in a superstitiously dogmatic way. What he sincerely wishes is to share with kindred spirits the very interesting findings that he has come across in course of his long researches in an area of knowledge rarely touched in the past. The author will feel his labour amply rewarded if he succeeds in communicating to at least a few among his readers the sense of thrill and sustained interest that he himself felt while exploring this untrodden field.
The title of the book may at first appear to be somewhat strange; but the content that we have sought to pack into it may very well seem absolutely preposterous. We earnestly request our readers not to pass any precipitate judgment but glance, instead, through any few pages chosen at random and see for themselves if this book contains or not anything interesting to engage their attention.
The author may be excused if he feels like introducing himself before his readers. He is a man of science by formal education and training; his fascination for metaphysics, the science of sciences, has been deep and entire even from his young days; finally, he is a humble seeker of the spirit walking with faltering steps on the path of self-perfection shown by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. With these meagre credentials — if they are credentials at all — he has ventured to approach and study in depth the evolutionary world-vision of these great spiritual Masters, in so far as it bears upon the ultimate glorious transformation of man's body and his physical life upon earth.
As is by now well-known, the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo has for its objective among other things:
(i)to make spiritual experiences real to the whole consciousness of man including that of his outer being;
(ii)not only to experience the truth subjectively and in one's inner consciousness alone, but to manifest it even in full activity;
(iii)an integral possession of the integrality of the Divine in
the life of this world and not merely beyond it.
In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "It is the object of my Yoga to transform life by bringing down into it the Light, Power and Bliss of the Divine Truth ana its dynamic certitudes. This Yoga is not a Yoga of world-shunning asceticism, but of divine life.... It aims at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object."1
Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo asserts emphatically: "I am concerned with the earth, not with the worlds beyond for their own sake; it is a terrestrial realisation that I seek and not a flight to distant summits."2
Thus, this Yoga of Integral Self-Perfection as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo aims not at a release from embodied existence nor at a departure out of the terrestrial manifestation into some supraterrestrial world of heavenly bliss and spiritual enjoyment, but at a supreme change of earthly life and existence and at a divine fulfilment of life here upon earth. Also, "the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here."3
Now, since Matter is the foundation of all evolutionary efflorescence, our body obviously assumes a great importance in the total scheme of the achievement — the divine fulfilment of earthly life — that Sri Aurobindo envisages.
No doubt, the human body with its anatomy and physiology is a marvellous product of biological evolution. The anterior shifting of the eyes coupled with the adoption of the vertical station, the complete freeing of the hands from the task of locomotion, the possession of a fine array of ten supple fingers, the unique endowment of the human cerebrum, the greatest tool yet developed by Nature in her long course of organic evolution — all these and many other unique attributes have turned man into the summit product of evolution so far.
But are we not at the same time poignantly aware that in many of its basic features and dispositions the human body and man's physical being are not a whit better than any other animal body or existence? The grossness and limitations of our present physical
1 Sri Aurobindo on Himself, pp. 99, 109.
2 Letters on Yoga, p. 91.
3 Sri Aurobindo on Himself, p. 109.
life, the various inconveniences of our animal body, its proneness to diseases and to the decaying process, its constantly recurring subjection to fatigue and inertia, its total dependence for its very viability on material alimentation procured from outside, its final dissolution and disappearance at death, also its unregenerate earth-nature and impulses and appetites that tend to drag down man's soaring spirit and frustrate the winged visions of his soul — all these seriously detract from the glory of man the mental-spiritual being.
But the question is: Are these limitations and impediments of the body to be considered as something permanent and insuperable?
The Seer-Vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother assures us on the contrary that the disabilities of the body and the animal frailties of physical nature need not and will not be there for all time to come. For, the terrestrial manifestation being progressive and evolutionary, the present spectacle of earth-life afflicted with its heavy load of miseries and indignities cannot in any way represent the unalterable last act of the drama. Thus, with the further elaboration of this evolutionary process leading to the descent and concomitant emergence in earth-nature, of a supreme power and light of the spirit, of what Sri Aurobindo calls Supermind or the divine Gnosis, all these obscurities and ambiguities will be radically transcended and the transfigured human body will shine in the glories of a 'pure and spiritualised physical existence'. "The transformation of the physical being might follow [an] incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of [the] highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit."1
At this point the critic may interject: Is it 'practical politics' after all ? As an ideal it may be alluring, but has it not been posited that at their best, ideals are fictions, being no more than abstract, purely conceptual absolutes; and at its worst, what is an ideal if not 'a malady of the mind' and 'a bright delirium of speech and thought' ? Anyway, has not evolution come to an end with the appearance on the earth-scene of man the mental being?
But Sri Aurobindo is unequivocal and emphatic when he asserts that the divine destiny of the body as envisaged above
1 Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation,p. 74.
is going to be the natural, logical and inevitable result of our future evolution out of our present human ignorance and imperfection into a far greater consciousness of the Spirit.
One may pertinently ask at this point: What will be the nature of this future evolution of man as contemplated by Sri Aurobindo? For, has it not been contended by some biologists that physical evolution has been almost completely short-circuited by man as applied to himself, although it is quite imaginable that social, emotional and mental evolution may carry him on to ever greater complexity and awareness1?
But a further — may be, virtually infinite — extension of the social, emotional and mental capacities and capabilities, is that all that is in store for the human race? Can there not be a far more glorious future for our wonderful species ? Can there not be a further phase of evolution ? Indeed, may we not pertinently raise the query: just as the inorganic phase of evolution was followed by the biological phase wherein 'life invaded the material sheath', just as towards the close of the biological phase the cerebral cortex began to be elaborated and with it 'earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining Mind', just as again at the end of the biological phase, with the development of the cerebrum, evolution started on a new course when 'man was moulded from the original brute', similarly now, with the attainment of sufficient maturity by man, may not the evolutionary process very well turn another leaf and pass on to an altogether new phase: the supramental sector of world-manifestation? For surely man as he is now constituted is too imperfect a creature to be the final product of evolutionary labour.
No doubt, man is the crown of all that has been achieved so far, but creation's travail cannot be finally justified with him; he can by no means be Nature's last possible poise:
"And if this were all and nothing more were meant, If what now seems were the whole of what must be, If this were not a stade through which we pass On our road from Matter to eternal Self, ... Well might interpret our mind's limited view Existence as an accident in Time,
1 See G. R. Harrison, What Man May Be: The Human Side of Science, p. 125.
Illusion or phenomenon or freak."1
Who is then there to answer our query? Least of all, the scientist. For, even if he may not become positively hostile and vociferous in his opposition to our suggestion of the fourth phase of evolution, the supramental, he will certainly remain mum over this question, for he cannot possibly venture to overstep his domain of immediately verifiable empirical facts. But there is needed, indeed, such an adventurous probe into the future — may be into the heart of the imminent future — which stands at our doorstep with its golden harvest of a marvellous Dawn. So we have to leave here the scientists' findings and fall back upon the vision of the seer. And whom else can we approach for the necessary light if not him who has not only demonstrated the theoretical possibility, nay the inevitability of this supramental phase of evolution, but actually made it his life's mission to hasten and actualise the glorious day when
"The world's darkness had consented to Heaven-light
And God needed no more the Inconscient's screen."2
Now, what is the destiny of man as revealed by this supreme prophet of super-humaniy ? According to the vision of Sri Aurobindo, man's importance in the world is that he gives to it that development of consciousness in which its transfiguration by a perfect self-discovery becomes possible. The real sense of man's progress does not lie in a mere restatement in different terms of what physical Nature has already accomplished. Nor can the ideal of human life be simply the animal repeated on a higher scale of mentality. Indeed, "Man has seen that there can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; the evolutionary oestrus is there in his parts of mind and life, the aspiration to exceed himself is delivered and articulate within him: he has become conscious of a soul, discovered the self and spirit. In him, then, the substitution of a conscious for a subconscious evolution has become conceivable and practicable, and it may well be concluded that the aspiration, the urge, the persistent endeavour in him is a sure sign of Nature's will for a higher
1 Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 166.
2 Ibid., Book X, Canto IV, p. 664.
way to fulfilment, the emergence of a greater status."1
And what is then that greater status ? "The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious cooperation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God? For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is."2 And here Sri Aurobindo sounds a note of warning to the race: "Mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why man himself should not arrive at supermanhood or at least lend his mentality, life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the spirit manifesting in Nature."3
But does not the goal held up by Sri Aurobindo seem to be too good and too glorious a prospect for humanity to realise? Indeed, resistance to this 'new Dawn's call' to build up divine manhood here upon earth itself may possibly come from two different ranks of humanity: from the traditional spiritualist as well as from the rationalist. The materialist basing himself on the past animal evolution of mankind ventures to equate man to nothing more than a glorified animal. He tries to explain away all of man's behaviour as an ingenious extrapolation of animal propensities. Is man, after all, anything but a somewhat complex physico-chemical machinery and processes and their epiphenomenon ?
The orthodox spiritualist may be no less dogmatic in his misgivings. To him the ideal of supermanhood is nothing but perverse and presumptuous on the part of man. For firstly, according to him, the Absolute can and need have no purpose in manifestation except perhaps the delight of an objectless Lila, world-play; secondly, even if we admit that there is an evolution, then, man must be the last stage of this process, because through him there
1 The Life Divine (Centenary Edition), p. 843.
2 Ibid., pp. 3-4.
3 Ibid., p. 847.
can be the rejection of embodied existence upon earth and a final escape or deliverance into some supraterrestrial plane of existence and experience otherwise termed 'heaven', or perhaps a dissolution into some utter and ineffable Nirvana.
Sri Aurobindo has discussed in detail and refuted all these arguments. He has proved that to say so is to miss the whole meaning of the terrestrial evolution. In fact, a progressive spiritual unfolding upon earth, as distinguished from an escape from this cosmic Lila, is the secret truth and significance of our material embodiment and it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature. "If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim posible to man upon earth."1 And Sri Aurobindo is emphatic on this point that even if man refuses his high spiritual fate, 'yet shall the secret truth in things prevail'.
One further question may arise here. The past history of the evolutionary process upon earth testifies to its extremely slow and tardy progression extending over millions of years. So, even if theoretically valid, the dream of the emergence, on the earth-scene, of divine manhood and of a divinely transfigured body may perhaps be realised only at an indeterminate distant future, may be at the end of thousands of years from now. In that case any discussion of the divine destiny of the body is premature to say the least and therefore bereft of any immediate importance or relevance.
Here again Sri Aurobindo assures us that this need not be so. For it has to be noted that "the appearance of human body and mind on the earth marks a crucial step, a decisive change in the course and process of the evolution; it is not merely a continuation of the old lines. Up till this advent of a developed thinking mind in Matter, evolution had been effected not by the self-aware aspiration, intention, will or seeking of the living being, but subconsciously or subliminally by the automatic operation of Nature."2 But with the emergence of man "the evolution has now become conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether
1 The Life Divine, p. 4.
2 Ibid., p. 843.
of the same character as when it was subconscious in its process. The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a conscious self-transformation."1 And this is bound to accelerate immensely the whole process of evolution: what would have normally required thousands of years may now be attempted and accomplished in a few centuries' time, if not in a few decades.
Thus, when we speak of the divine transfiguration of the body, to be brought about in the course of the future evolution of man, we are not indulging in a child soul's phantasy or its demands for arbitrary miracles nor are we visualising any impossible chimera that goes beyond or outside all forces of Nature and somehow becomes automatically effective. What we are contemplating is the control and conquest of the prevailing determinism of our bodily system by the higher determinism of the supernal grades and powers of our being and consciousness. Indeed, the desired transformation is going to be attempted through the action, upon body and matter, of a progressively growing consciousness acquired through the agency of Integral Yoga and rising higher and higher in the scale of its luminous potency till one reaches the absolute potency of what Sri Aurobindo calls Supramental Gnosis. Thus, it has become quite conceivable and practicable that, with man's conscious collaboration, "it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of consciousness; the consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body."2
The Mother, the life-long collaborator of Sri Aurobindo in their herculean task of preparing the world and mankind for the supramental phase of evolution, is quite specific on this point. She says:
"We want an integral transformation, the transformation of the body and all its activities.... But when this was told to people, many thought that it was possible to transform the body and its activities without troubling oneself at all with what was happening within — which is of course not quite true. Before you take up the work of physical transformation, which is of all things the
1The Life Divine, pp. 655-56.
2Ibid., p. 844. (Italics ours)
most difficult, you must have your inner consciousness firmly, solidly established in the Truth
Here are her forthright words uttered on another occasion: "You must begin from within. I have said a hundred times, you must begin from above. You must purify the higher region and then purify the lower."2 Sri Aurobindo has warned us: "The transformation to which we aspire is too vast and complex to come at one stroke; it must be allowed to come by stages. The physical change is the last of these stages and is itself a progressive process. The inner transformation cannot be brought about by physical means either of a positive or a negative nature. On the contrary, the physical change itself can only be brought about by a descent of the greater supramental consciousness into the cells of the body."3
We should note that Sri Aurobindo is no speculative philosopher. He is not satisfied merely with painting in rainbow colours a gleaming picture of the ideal. He is a supreme scientist of life who proceeds to realise the ideal in himself and then to build up an integral method for others to follow. And what is the efficacy of this preconised method called the Integral Yoga of Self-Perfection? Well, let us listen to him (the unbiased rationalist might get an abundance of conviction from his significant utterance):
"I must remind you that I have been an intellectual myself and no stranger to doubts — both the Mother and myself have had one side of the mind as positive and as insistent on practical results and more so than any Russell can be.... We know well what is the difference between a subjective experience and a dynamic outward-going and realising Force. So although we have faith, (and who ever did anything great in the world without having faith in his mission or the Truth at work behind him?) we do not found ourselves on faith alone, but on a great ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing all our lives. I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane.... I know that the Supramental Descent is inevitable — I have faith in view of my experience
1 Bulletin, Vol. XV, No. 4, p. 51.
2 See Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (Part Eight), p. 102.
3 Letters on Yoga, p. 1473.
that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age."1
To know more about this supremely potent dynamic status of spiritual consciousness that Sri Aurobindo has termed as Supermind, the readers are referred to relevant pages of this book.
Now, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have always declared that the earth-conditions are now ready to receive the Supramental Light and Force. In fact, the present-day ills of humanity are only the birth-throes of a new Dawn. The objective conditions favourable for the Descent are already there. But this in itself is a necessary but by no means sufficient factor. For the Supramental Descent to occur there must be someone to cooperate fully and occultly with the process and accelerate the march of evolution. What would have normally taken thousands of years should now be encompassed in a century or so, and this has precisely been the mission of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Single-mindedly they have engaged themselves in this supreme task for the last half a century; they have reared up step after step the ladder of transcendence and silently worked for the day when the process of evolution will take the next stride and the new Dawn will be heralded. They have not trumpeted their mission, for in the Mother's inimitable words: "The greatest victories are the least noisy. The manifestation of a new world is not proclaimed by beat of drum."
It was in 1932 that Sri Aurobindo wrote the afore-mentioned letter expressing his sense of certainty as regards the Supramental Descent occurring in our own time. Later on, in 1956 to be precise, the Mother declared that what he and she had assiduously worked to manifest in the field of earthly evolution, is not any more a mere possibility lying in the womb of distant future but a realised fact. Her actual words are: "The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no longer a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it."2
But the skeptic may raise his eye-brows and interject: "But where is the proof of this momentous event! I do not see any signs of it!"
1 Sri Aurobindo on Himself, pp. 468-69. (Italics ours)
2 The Mother's Message on April 24, 1956.
Quite so; for in the logic of things he has first to awaken his inner eye before he. can expect to take cognisance of this tremendous event; otherwise it would not be supermind but something which could be very well seized and comprehended by mind.
But this does not mean that this supramental Manifestation will have no effect on the visible field of evolution and will remain for ever aloof on the high peaks of mystic halo. Far from it; for it is no static knowledge that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have sought. After all, they have tried, through their unparalleled Sadhana, to make the Supermind overtly operative in earth-nature, because they have seen in their spiritual vision that it is the Supramental Gnosis that alone possesses a world-transfiguring potency capable of bringing the evolutionary march to its cherished goal. Has not Sri Aurobindo declared that "power of self is the sign of the divinity of self, — a powerless spirit is no spirit" ?1 "If Knowledge brings not power to change the world,"2 then "truth and knowledge are an idle gleam."3
And the Mother has reminded us: "We are right in the midst of this period of transition where the two [worlds — the old and the new] are entangled, — where the other still persists all-powerful and entirely dominating the ordinary consciousness, but where the new one quietly slips in, yet very modest, unnoticed — unnoticed to the point that outwardly it doesn't disturb very much, for the time being, that in the consciousness of the majority of men it is quite imperceptible. And still it is working, growing — till the moment it will be strong enough to assert itself visibly.... We are present at the birth of a new world, quite young, quite weak — not in its essence but in its outer manifestation — not yet recognised, not even felt, denied by the majority. But it is there, making an effort to grow up, quite sure of the result."4
Thus we shall see that as days pass by, Supermind or the dynamic Truth-Consciousness of Sachchidananda that has overtly emerged in the field of evolution to become from now on the governing principle there, will make its presence increasingly more manifest even to the outward eye. In fact, this supramental descent and intervention has ushered in an age of miracles — miracles, we repeat, to a mind
1The Life Divine, p. 1024.
23 Lines from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.
4 Questions and Answers, 1957 & 1958, pp. 129-30.
"That sees the empiric fact as settled law",1
forgetting that so-called laws are nothing but long-standing "habits of the world" which can very well be changed, if the Spirit's self-vision and self-determination so will it.
The manifestation of Supermind in Earth-Nature has indeed marked a decisive transition from the evolution in Ignorance to a conscious evolution. The divine potency of this supreme Power of the Spirit has brought in an element of greatly accelerated speed in the whole process of evolutionary progression upon earth. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
"The increased rapidity is possible ... because the conscious participation of the inner being is there and the power of the Super-nature is already at work in the half-transformed lower nature, so that the steps which would otherwise have had to be taken tentatively in the night of Inconscience or Ignorance can now be taken in an increasing light and power of Knowledge. The first obscure material movement of the evolutionary Force is marked by an aeonic graduality; the movement of life progress proceeds slowly but still with a quicker step, it is concentrated into the figure of millenniums; mind can still further compress the tardy leisureliness of Time and make long paces of the centuries; but when the conscious spirit intervenes, a supremely concentrated pace of evolutionary swiftness becomes possible.... An involved rapidity of the evolutionary course swallowing up the stages can ... come in when the power of the conscious spirit has prepared the field and the supramental Force has begun to use its direct influence."2
Now, this process of supramental transformation of the inner being and consciousness of man is bound to have its effect and repercussion on his physical being and system as well. The ascent of the individual from the physical-mental to the supramental consciousness must inevitably open out the possibility of a corresponding ascension in the grades of substance acting as the outermost vehicle, vāhana, of the transformed embodied being. "The conquest of the lower principles by Supermind and its liberation
1A line from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.
2The Life Divine, p. 932
of them into a divine life and divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance."1
Sri Aurobindo assures us that there will no doubt remain a material base for the New Body to appear in course of the contemplated supramental transformation, but it will be 'a new earth with divine structure', having for its stuff the supramental substance and for its organisation a divine functioning, in which the Earth-Mother will finally reveal her unshrouded supernal splendour. Thus will appear on the terrestrial plane 'a divinely human body' about which Sri Aurobindo has prophesied :
"Even the body shall remember God,
Nature shall draw back from mortality
And Spirit's fires shall guide the earth's blind force;
..........
The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze
And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face,
These senses of heavenly sense grow capable,
The flesh and nerves of a strange ethereal joy
And mortal bodies of immortality.
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine."2
But does this goal of the emergence of a 'glorious body', 'corps glorieux' seem to be too good a prospect to be at all actualised even in some remote future ? — far be it to speak of an imminent realisation. But, if this conscious self-evolutionary attempt, on the part of some pioneers, to score a total victory over all the present limitations of man's body and bodily life, looks like an act of folly, we may only quote what the Mother herself has said in another context — that of the physical conquest of death:
"That seems a madness. But all new things have appeared as madness until they become realities. The hour is come for this madness to be realised."3
1The Life Divine, p. 261.
2Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, pp. 707, 709, 710, 711.
3Bulletin, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 85.
But let us clearly note that this seeking after a perfected physical body, this yearning for the release from the frailties and disabilities of our actually elaborated physical existence and incarnate life are not in any way related to the finite being's blind and ignorant, obscure and egoistic attachment to terrestrial corporeal life, or to the limited creature's fearful shrinking from the doom of physical decadence and ultimate dissolution.
Then, why do the Sadhakas of the Integral Yoga seek to collaborate consciously with the supramental process of evolution in the building up of a divinely transfigured New Mind, New Life and New Body upon earth? It is because we believe that a perfect self-expression of the Spirit is the object of terrestrial existence and it is a perfect and divinised life for which the earth-nature is in travail and this very seeking persistently maintained is a sure sign of the Divine Will in Nature. Indeed, the soul of significance of the whole process of earthly evolution stretching over millions of years can only be 'the revelation of Being in perfect Becoming'.
One more question remains to be answered. For, one may still point out that, after all, to-day or to-morrow, sooner or later, in the immediate future or at a far later date, one has to discard and leave behind the earthly embodiment: for, surely no one in his senses is going to assert that one will be bound to a not-to-be-discarded body for all eternity! In that case, why spend so much effort and labour on a vain attempt at the ushering in of a divinely transformed body ?
Here is Sri Aurobindo's rejoinder: "That is the argument of the Mayavadin to whom all manifestation is useless and unreal because it is temporary — even the life of the gods is of no use because it is in Time, not in the Timeless. But if manifestation is of any use, then it is worthwhile having a perfect manifestation rather than an imperfect one."1
Here are some pertinent verses from Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri:
"Heaven in its rapture dreams of perfect earth,
Earth in its sorrow dreams of perfect heaven.
1 Letters on Yoga, p. 1231.
Since God has made earth, earth must make in her God."1
"O life, the life beneath the wheeling stars
For victory in the tournament with death,
For bending of the fierce and difficult bow,
For flashing of the splendid sword of God!
Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;
Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield,
The forge where the Arch-mason shapes his works."2
"Easy the heavens were to build for God,
Earth was his difficult matter, earth the glory
Gave of the problem and the race and strife."3
This, then, is the attitude of the Sadhakas of the Integral Yoga vis-à-vis the seeking after the perfection of the body and bodily life (kāyā-siddhi) including as its ultimate term the physical conquest over death as an outer physical symbol and sign of Spirit's total mastery over matter.
Now about this book. The series of essays comprising this research undertaking represents an honest attempt, for the 'sons of an intellectual age', to study in detail, in a few of its salient aspects, the divine transfiguration of the material body of man which is sure to come about in the future evolution of the race. We shall try to justify, on metaphysical as well as on scientific grounds, this glorious prospect of physical transformation and indicate in the light of the Supramental vision vouchsafed by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, how far and in what way, the insistent problems of food and sleep, fatigue and inertia, disease and decay, sex and sensuality, and finally the sphinx-like problem of death and dissolution are going to be solved in the transformed divine body to appear in time.
We shall incidentally seek to find out — in however meagre and suggestive a measure — any corroborative evidence gleaned from the field of past biological evolution.
1 Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, pp. 684, 93.
2 Ibid., Book XI, Canto I, pp. 686-87.
3 Ibid., Book X, Canto IV, p. 653.
The painstaking investigation and search for necessary clues, extending over many months and culminating in the production of this book, necessitated the study of a couple of hundreds of books and periodicals. It is obvious that in the definitive preparation of the work, also to substantiate our thesis, we have drawn heavily upon the ideas and observations of numerous authors and thinkers, both ancient and modern, of the Orient as Well as of the Occident. We have cited the name of any particular author and given adequate references, each time we have quoted him or otherwise benefited from his findings.
It is my great privilege to record here my indebtedness to this galaxy of distinguished thinkers whose writings and researches have provided the sinews to the present work. The author craves the indulgence of any writer or publisher whose name he may have inadvertently forgotten to mention in the body of the book.
My deepest obligation is due to Mr. K.D. Sethna, the renowned Editor of the cultural monthly Mother India and a great poet, savant and authentic exponent of Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future, for agreeing to write a Foreword to this book.
How can I adequately express my gratitude to revered Nolinida (Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta, the life-long companion and the foremost disciple of Sri Aurobindo) for invoking on the most solemn and significant date, the seventeenth of November, the Blessings of the Mother for the author of this humble work?
August 15, 1975
JUGAL KISHORE MUKHERJEE
Home
Disciples
Jugal Kishore Mukherjee
Books
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.